Homemade Granola Bars

Reading "Omnivore's Dilemma" has only heightened by determination to eat less processed food. Which brings me to one of my favorite processed foods, Nature Valley granola bars. I buy them in bulk from BJ's.

They don't have as much bad stuff as many processed foods, but the saturated fat level is a little on the high side as are the calories (like many food giants, General Mills plays games with the serving size, writing on the label that the nutritional information is for 1 bar without noting that the package contains 2 bars).

I decided this weekend to try to make my own granola bars. My cookbooks proved of little help, so I turned to the Internet and found this recipe from Alton Brown of Food Network.

I like Brown as host of Iron Chef, but I find him somewhat annoying on his own. I can't put my finger on why. I want to say he's pedantic, but that's not really the case. He's actually very down to earth and straightforward in the food he presents and his instructions for preparing it. Guess it's just one of those things.

That said, his granola bar recipe came out fantastically. The bars are a little less crunchy and a little more chewy than the industrial goodness of General Mills, but definitely more flavorful with greater complexity. You can taste the different ingredients, whereas the Nature Valley bars are pretty one note.

I made the following modifications to the recipe: I substituted two tablespoons of canola oil for the butter (less saturated fat), left out the sunflower seeds instead adding more rolled oats, and used chopped walnuts instead of slivered almonds (I had them in the pantry). I used dried cherries for the fruit. My glass pan was also a little smaller, more like 8" x 8".

Easy, relatively quick and much tastier than the industrial variety.

Poached Perfection

Well, maybe not perfection.

I was out of fruit yesterday morning. I usually have a bagel and a clementine or banana or berries for breakfast, and without fruit I knew I'd get very hungry before lunch.

So I needed a little something extra. I looked in the fridge and saw we had one organic egg left. Why not poach an egg?

I'd never done it, but I've seen it done on Food Network. And I poach chicken breasts every week for my lunch so I'm familiar with the technique.

I put water in a large sauce pan and turned the burner to seven. In about five or six minutes, I had slow simmer, the bubbles just barely rising in the liquid. I cracked the egg and dropped it in the water. Luckily, the yoke didn't break.

I then did something stupid. I forgot to turn down the heat to a little under five, as I always do when poaching chicken. By the time I realized (I was reading the paper), the water was boiling furiously. I took the pan off the ring and lowered the heat. Luckily, only part of the white had separated from the yoke.

Eventually, I got the water back to a gentle simmer. In total, I poached the egg about three to four minutes before removing it with a skimmer.

It looked a little ragged, but it was basically intact. I cut into it and it was perfect, the white fluffy, the joke just a little runny.

I have to say, there was something about the egg that was deeply satisfying. I found myself thinking about it off and on all day.

It occurred to me as well that poaching is about the healthiest way to cook an egg. One egg has just 6 percent of the recommended daily saturated fat (according to the package) and obviously if you cook it water, you are not adding fat in the form of butter or oil.

A wonderful, simple dish. I highly recommend.

Just Whip It

I made chocolate chip cookies earlier this week. Instead of using the paddle attachment to cream the butter and sugars, and mix in the dry ingredients, I used the whisk. I was curious if it would make a difference.

It did (duh!). Forcing air into the batter made a fluffier cookie. Instead of pancaking, the cookies baked into airy little domes.

I liked them, but my wife thinks they are too cakey.

Feed Me Bubbe!

I love this woman. A nice Jewish boy from outside Boston loves his grandmother's cooking and decides she ought to be on the Internet. He creates a website and makes videos showing his "Bubbe," Yiddish for grandma, making Jewish classics like chicken soup and matzo balls. And of course every episode includes a Yiddish Word of the Day.

I'm reminded of that great scene in the movie "New York Stories" where Woody Allen all but makes love to a piece of chicken.

This is great, great stuff. Solid, classic home cooking, exactly the type of sustenance that too many of us have lost touch with.

A big hat tip to my friend Alice for sending me a link.

Check it out and Ess gezunterhait!

Corporate Corn

I've started reading "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan and it's brilliant. It's like Fast Food Nation, only deeper and more disturbing, if that's possible. His baring of the facts of the factory food chain is deeply unsettling.

I found his chapters about corn cultivation and how corn became the dominant foodstuff in our diets especially eye-opening. He visits an Iowa farm not far from where my mother grew up and describes how in the last 50 years some of the most fertile land on earth has gone from supporting all manner of crops and animals (put out to pasture and fed on grass) to growing only two commodities: feed corn and soybeans. He explains how government policies changed in the early to mid-1970s to favor agribusiness over farmers and to encourage permanent overproduction of corn. Indeed, corn now sells for less than it costs to grow with the government making up the difference in the form of subsidies to farmers.

Who does this help? Big business, which now has a reliable, ever-growing supply of cheap corn that is raw material for everything from cattle (they are fed it) to processed foods to the sweetener in your soda, even to the waxy sheen on your fruit.

And the farmer? He's left barely able to make a living, his very abundance having turned him into a corporate serf.

And the consumer? He or she is bombarded with slick marketing to gin up sales of unhealthy products contributing to an explosion of obesity and illness. In the process, corporations have revolutionized how beef is produced. Instead of eating grass as nature intended, beef cattle are herded into giant feed lots and fed a witch's brew consisting primarily of corn, which makes them sick. It fattens them up quicker, but if they stayed on the diet indefinitely, most would die. All this has happened only in the last 30 or 40 years, a disturbing metamorphosis very few Americans are aware of.

At one point, Pollan suggests that part of the reason industry wanted this new system was to break the economic independence and hence the political clout of farmers, who since the Populist Movement (regularly and unfairly derided by our journalistic elite) of the 1890s had confounded money power.

Whether this was done on purpose is largely beside the point. That was the practical result, especially as it led to depopulation of the farm belt.

It made me think of other groups that once challenged corporate power, but no longer can. Small retailers? Far, far fewer, especially in small town, rural America where Wal-Mart decimated Main Street. Doctors and hospitals? Eclipsed by insurers, HMOs and drug companies. Small and medium-sized manufacturers? Driven out of business by foreign competition cheered on by Wal-Mart, allowing it to become one of the biggest, most profitable companies on earth.

Indeed, I'm struck that lawyers are one of the few professions independent of corporate America, one of the few businesses left where an individual with gumption, guts and talent can make it big on their own. You may think that's good or bad, and I'm not saying lawyers who sometimes overreach are heroes, but it is instructive that one of corporate America's biggest priorities is to rein in lawsuits, which would hobble one of the few groups able to effectively check their power and hold them accountable.

The corporate food chain epitomizes the transformation of America in the last three decades from a society built on individual endeavor, initiative and independence into one in which most of us are at the mercy of corporate interests and marketing.

The Pain Was Ludricous . . . Surface Of The Sun

Two reporters at The Day of New London made a video of themselves taking on the Cinco Chilis Burritos at Sol Toro in the Mohegan Sun Casino. The dish is the hottest to be had in southeastern Connecticut. So hot, they brought along on a doctor to monitor their blood pressure and heart rates and "sign their death certificates" if need be.

Very amusing. Check it out.

Adam Richman, eat your heart out.

Rosemary Roast Potatoes

I love rosemary, especially with potatoes. Here's a simple, tasty recipe for rosemary roast potatoes:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Oil a nonstick roasting pan.

Slice four medium potatoes (Russet or waxy variety) into quarter inch rounds using a food processor or knife. Put slices in mixing bowl with 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh, coarsely chopped rosemary and salt and pepper to taste (I use about 2 teaspoons salts and three shake s of pepper). Pour in about 3 tablespoons canola or olive oi.

Stir and dump potatoes into the roasting pan. Try to distribute evenly, but potatoes need not be in a single layer. Put the pan in the oven and set timer for 10 minutes. After the timer dings, remove and with a spatula turn the slices. Return to the oven and set timer for another 10 minutes. Repeat until golden, about 50 minutes

The finished product is wonderful, flavorful and aromatic with textures ranging from crispy to firm. Some slices turn into dark potato chips, tasting like the slightly burnt Wise Potato chips of my youth, only better. Goes with pretty much anything, meat, fish, fowl.